Green Dam, the Nanny filter software that all PC manufacturers in China are required, by July 1, to install on all PCs they sell, has been widely criticized and mocked in the Chinese and foreign media and on the Internet.

The latest onslaught on a government policy that everyone from nationalist Chinese netizens to foreign journalists derides as absurd is a series of images featuring Green Dam Girl (绿坝娘).

According to Hecaitou, the images show the creativity of the post 80s generation (i.e. those born after 1980). The Green Dam Girl character carries a rabbit (the Green Dam software's mascot), wears a River Crab badge (a pun about 'harmonious society that Chinese netizens use to mock Internet censorship), and holds a bucket of paint (or soy sauce) to wipe out online filth.

Green Dam Girl: That unhealthy information is so gross; I'm a girl worth 40 million Grass Mud Horse: I'm just an alpaca

Comments on Green Dam Girl

BTW, I like the 4chanish direction, What a way to attract the emo crowds. Danwei: Way to promote a harmonious society like that, bringing together the regular danwei China-study-journalist-weirdos with the freaks-of-society. Green Dam is doing it's job.

Appearantly there is difference between “preinstall/bundle/预装”and “install/安装” in Chinese, and “preinstall” is not in the sense bundling.

“按照预装绿色过滤软件通知的要求，这款软件预装在电脑的硬盘或者随机的光盘中，要发挥作用还需按照安装程序进行激活” - according to the requirements in green filter software notification, the [setup] software is bundled on computer hard drive or CD, to activate it still require following the setup program.

There, Green Dam setup has to be avalable on hard drive or CD, not the filter application itself. And end users are not required to install it or run it.

Charles Liu, the interview you cite is not with anyone from MIIT, which is ultimately responsible for the memo it issued.

There are competing interpretations of that particular paragraph in the Chinese media, and to this point an MIIT official has only seen fit to make a clarification (a) anonymously, and (b) to the official English-language media.

The line in question reads
二、“绿坝-花季护航”软件应预装在计算机硬盘或随机光盘内，且在恢复分区和恢复光盘中作为备份文件。
2. The Green Dam-Youth Escort software should be pre-installed on the computer's hard drive or on disc, and a back-up copy must be kept on a recovery partition and recovery disk.

How to pre-install onto a disc may be part of the source of the confusion. It could be bundled only, or it could be installed and operating, but it's far from as clear-cut as you make it seem, and for whatever reason, MIIT has chosen not to clarify the situation.

I think that's a fair re-interpretation of that line, Charles Liu. My issue is not with the interpretation itself — perhaps the MIIT did initially intend to mandate bundling only. Instead, it's with the suggestion that interpreting the memo to mean that actual installation is mandatory is somehow the result of "anti-sinoism."

An article you cited as evidence elsewhere suggests, "because the MIIT memo used the word "pre-install" (预装), in line with the usual interpretation of the word, the media generally believed that installing the software onto computers was compulsory."

Perhaps the usual interpretation is incorrect; MIIT has not made that clear yet. Until that happens, it's ridiculous to suggest that the people reading it that way are motivated by anti-China or anti-government sentiment.

The Xinhua report is here. Good find, a statement to the Chinese media. However, particularly since the Duanwu fuel price debacle, people are understandably wary of reassurances by unnamed ministry "responsible persons."

Also note that the very next day, a China News report (from the other big state-owned news agency) answered the question of whether Green Dam was compulsory with three pieces of evidence: (1) the unnamed MIIT source saying "users can choose whether or not to install it," (2) a People's Daily article saying that installing the software was not compulsory, and (3) the software company GM saying that users "can uninstall it if they choose."

I'm not arguing against your interpretation here (I've used the term "pre-load" when writing about the issue myself, precisely because of the ambiguity), and certainly there's nothing stopping people from wiping the software from their own machines after purchase. I just believe that the vagueness of the terminology and the apparently contradictory remarks from the parties involved mean that the conclusion that Green Dam comes installed and running is an entirely reasonable one to make.

The software is similar to McAFee Parental Control though it has more features such as on-line game time limits and on-line chat limits. In the setting screen, the user can turn image filtering and semanic analysis features off. It's password-protected and 100% under the user's control. The user has a choice for voluntary censorship for kids.